IQEComponents
Jamie Engen- Writing is something that should be thoughtful and important to the writer as well as the reader. If a student has no interest in or passion for a subject their writing will suffer. (JW) When writing about something, especially life experiences, be meaningful and sincere. Even young students have a large number of life experiences from which to draw. (JW) In order to become more successful at writing the writer has to keep trying until eventually what they write is second nature... Reading is something that you have to learn to love, just find the right book or article and make yourself interested. The more students read, the more writing genres they will be exposed to which enables them to use more styles in their own writing. (JW) Trust in yourself and what you write and most will be intrigued by your writing... Teachers who are committed to writing instruction should be writers themselves. (JW) Writing is a social activity. The more students can interact and bounce ideas off one another, the better their writing becomes. (JW) Components of Effective Writing (Kim Swygert) A social process: Writing is a social process and a form of communication. During the writing process, we socialize with peers, teachers, or use our own inner speech. Writing as a social process was a common finding among my group members. In the readings, common practices showing writing as a social process were group discussions with the teacher, writing workshops, and casual conversations between students. Giving students choices: Allow students to choose their own writing topics rather than have the teacher constantly assign topics. Encouraging students to write about personal experiences was also a common theme in the readings. When students are able to choose their subjects, they have less difficulty during the writing process. This isn’t to say that the teacher should never assign topics, but when first teaching writing to students, giving students freedom to choose their subjects can beneficial because it takes some of the stress out of writing. Writing comes easier when we’re interested in or have experience in a certain topic. --Kim Swygert -Natalie Hodo From the many blogs I read, including my own, here are consensus components listed by my classmates that will assist me to teach students to write: . Freedom of expression . Model Student learning . Informal writing activities . Collaborative writing . Guiding student writing . Current events . Freedom of expression. Students seem to enjoy writing when they write about personal experiences. Kids love to talk about what they have recently done. If we encourage them to write about their personal experiences, such as what they did over the weekend or a recent trip to their grandparents' house, this would give them the opportunity to write down what they have recently done. This type of learning encourages all to participate. . Teachers should model students to write at a specific level in order for them to learn to write effectively. If students are guided during the process of writing, they will be able to determine when they have achieved the goal of writing a good piece of literature. . Informal writing. Children should be allowed to write drafts that are not gramatically correct. They will be more susceptible to write if they know they will not be graded on the content of their writing. This activity will also encourage full participation from all students. . Students should be able to collaborate during writing activities in order to exchange ideas and learn to work in a social setting. By allowing them to walk around and talk to their classmates about the assignment, they will not only learn social skills, but may obtain more information about the assignment, thus possibly improving their chances of getting a better understanding of the assignment and getting a better grade. . Social issues are ideal for introducing a subject on which students can write. Students can voice their own opinions about issues that are introduced in the media (newspapers, local news, news magazines, etc.). This will provide them the confidence to voice their own opinions and to practice utilizing their own writing skills to voice them. This will also add variety to your lesson plan. The list I presented in my Blog was very similar to the consensus. I too mentioned that learning is a social activity. But I also mentioned that, as in life, there is always someone who is a bit more aggressive than the next who will be, or who will attempt to be, the leader of the group. This indicates that things have not changed, and we are still living by the social caste system. There are many methods of teaching children to write. The aforementioned methods are inspiring. For an aspiring teacher, they have gave me ideas on how to teach writing. I learned ways to encourage all of my students to participate, and activities that will be conducive to a diverse group of students. I look forward to reading the lists from other students on teaching writing -Rachel Nault .Many of the blogs had very similar ideas pulled away from the different articles we read. The first and formost idea that a lot of people came away with was that inorder to teach writiing, the teacher must write and participate, and share as well. Many of what children learn is from simple modeling by a sponsor and if students see that the teacher doesn't care, they won't care either, but if the teacher is out there being a wrtiter and being excited about it, then that will reflect the student's reactions. .Socializing was a huge aspect that seemed to come up some where in just about every artcile or blog. The idea of this is not to have students sit quietly and write about something, but to share with eachother, talk to eachother, and use eachother's ideas. Being social is a part of life, and as with reading, socializing with writing and leave the students with a deeper understading of what it is they are trying to get from the text, as well as learn the importance of other people's ideas and see the significance in the differences in everyone. .Allowing students to write about things that mean something to them, something they can pull from their own lives needs to be incorperated. Granted students will eventually have to write on something they may not care too much about, but in the younger grades, when students are learning to write, allowing them to write about personal experiences will help them see the importance in writing. . Teaching students how to write in all different ways will benefit them. Teaching them the difference in writing a summary and a story and complaint and a reflection, will give them a great tool that they can implement.